ID:1402516
 
I created some water a few years ago for an old game I was working on. Now I decided to use them again but I want to know if there's anything I can do to make them better. I'm not really a pixel artist. I'm a programmer. Just trying to get in to doing this for myself.



Your basic H2O.



This is used to show walls and/or rocks that are inside of the water. Doesn't seem to be showing its transparency here though.



This is meant to be used for showing when waves are crashing against the rocks. This one is also transparent.

--

From what I remember, I just drew distorted circles in DM Paint and used select to line them up. Then I shifted it up to make it in to an animation. Then I gave it two colors.
Is this for a river? Ocean? Pound?
River/Ocean.
ima be honest the shapeing & not enough detail explaining that its water so it make it look like it is wierd..
Any suggestions? How would you edit it?
i can make an rough draft i suppose
It's suppose to be fast running water. That's why there's so many distortions. Mostly fits the description of an Ocean.
A few pointers:

1) One thing that strikes me is that graphical representations of water tend to be horizontally oriented, while yours seems more vertical. (because the ovals that make up the highlights are taller than they are wide) Rotate it 90 degrees, and it would look more water-y

2) This may seem a bit contradictory to everything a beginner turf/tile maker is learning from pixel art tutorials and such, but your water is actually not uniform enough Yes, randomness is good, but water tends to fall into patterns. Waves in the same area tend to be roughly the same size and shape. So, your ripples/crests/highlights actually could be more uniform in terms of density across the tile (as it is now, you've got some areas that are light-pixel dense, and others that are more open/free of highlights) Obviously, the tile shouldn't be perfectly uniform, but a little more than it is.

3) I'd suggest adding another layer of darker distortions under the highlights. This will add depth to the tile. One method of doing so is to copy your icon, turn the "highlights" into "lowlights" (by swapping them out with a shade darker than the main "base" shade of your water), shifting them by a few pixels diagonally (and/or doing a horizontal flip/mirror, and pasting the highlights over them (you can use alpha transparency to blend the layers together as well)
i dont see a point in animating water >< i think it looks better non animated with some waves splashing against rocks or any other objects.
In response to Southend_boi
Where did the waves form that makes the splash?
In response to Void Games
Void Games wrote:
Where did the waves form that makes the splash?

at the base of an object.
In response to Southend_boi
Southend_boi wrote:
i think it looks better non animated

I think it doesn't look like water UNLESS it is animated.

Your water looks like a bunch of scribbles that you just animated to shift northwest every frame. That's what it is, actually.

Water is tricky to do well -- at least for me. I'd suggest looking up a tutorial on drawing and animating it.
I don't know if Xirre's still doing this, but for anyone else interested these might be helpful for drawing water:
I was a bit interested in the topic and just decided to throw my two cents in. I don't do much icon artistry, but I whipped together a nice fading water transition that actually flows very smoothly. It still has a little bit of grid to it, but that was only because I didn't offset the lower layer any.

For ease of creation, I did edit the opacity of each layer in photoshop, but honestly, if you're an anti-photoshop elitist, you really need to go home and rethink your life.

You could always try LummoxJR's method... Good luck. :)
LummoxJR's method hurts my brain. -- @Mask of Illusion: Yes, I'm still doing this. But, I'm more focused on a 3D project rather than BYOND. I'll post an update eventually on my attempt.
Ah awesome, good luck with your Unity project. (:
Thanks... Frustrated from the networking part of it today anyhow.. Giving it a rest for a few days. So, the update may be soon.
Yeah, that's about as far as I got!
Alternate Worlds was originally going to be a 3D project but I couldn't get my head around creating a networking protocol for it. Eventually I gave up, played around with UDK and then GMS, circling all the way back round to BYOND.
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